1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a vacuum cleaner, and more particularly to a multi-cyclone dust separator having improved efficiency in separating fine dust.
2. Description of the Related Art
Vacuum cleaners have a wide variety of dust separators, but recently cyclone dust separators, which separate dust from dust-laden air using a centrifugal force, have generally been used.
Cyclone dust separators form a rotating air current and centrifugally separate dust from dust-laden air. Since such cyclone dust separators do not need disposable filters such as dust bags, such cyclone dust separators can be used permanently. However, such cyclone dust separators have a weaker suction force at the initial operation than dust separators using dust bags, and have difficulty in separating fine dust. In order to complement these shortcomings of the cyclone dust separator, multi-cyclone dust separators have been developed.
A multi-cyclone dust separator primarily filters large dust and contaminants using a first cyclone dust separator, and secondarily filters primarily-filtered air using a second cyclone dust separator, so the effect of separating fine dust is superior to conventional cyclone dust separators.
In such a multi-cyclone dust separator, a plurality of second cyclone dust separators are generally disposed around a first cyclone dust separator in parallel. In this arrangement, the volume of a multi-cyclone dust separator is large. In order to address this drawback, the first and second cyclone dust separators may be made small. In this case, however, since the second cyclone dust separators are small and the air paths of the second cyclone dust separators are narrow, the air paths may frequently become clogged and thus malfunctions may occur.